Four-game Wrapup

Following Villa's submission to Watford, four games ago, and after the next week's away win against Brighton I thought I'd keep my quill pen dry in case it was a one-game wonder. After all, I was beginning to be less enthusiastic about Gerrard and I wanted to see just where the Villa was heading. I thought I would wait until after the West Ham match to pen more thoughts.

Well, Brighton, Saints and Leeds were dealt with quite admirably, and thoughts of being dragged down into the relegation zone evaporated. Especially as Coutinho, now playing just behind the two main strikers, seemed to be really getting into his game. After Southampton, Gerrard was left purring: “I thought at times - with all due respect to everyone else - he showed a level that was above the game. It was a pleasure to be in the stadium.”

Villa's new shape was looking good, too, over the three matches since Watford.

Then we went down to London to hammer the Hammers as well, only to be hemmed in instead. Moyes is a good manager. Everton need him!

To be fair, until the series of collisions started to take place later in the first half, I thought it was an interesting game that could go either way. But the half rather stuttered to a halt, and so it was with the second period too for quite some time as more injuries took their toll. In fact, after three-quarters of the match I was beginning to think that West Ham looked the more tired of the two teams after the mid-week exertions. Gerrard seemed to think so, too, sending Bailey on to mess up West Ham's day.

Problem was, West Ham had other ideas. They scored. Oh well, at least it was scored by a Ukrainian.

Little Phil had not done too much in this match to impress me. In fact, Little Emi seemed to increase Villa's tempo after coming on and finally presented young Jacob with a great chance which he took with aplomb.

So, a strange match. The Villa just did not have the magic needed to squeeze out a point, and that was quite disappointing as I felt that either Phil or Emi could have tried something special at least, to get that point.

It was perhaps more frustrating that Villa's stats in this match were better than the Hammers in every department. Yet we lost. Villa even only gave away three fouls.

Could it be that the defence is again losing vital concentration just when it is needed? Well, there's now a whole week for the Villa to think on this result and how the match was played. In some ways perhaps an end to 'the run' is better to ensure complacency doesn't set in.

Overall, however, I am impressed how Gerrard and his team have seen what was wrong and done something positive about it. What I have seen is far from the best they can achieve, however, but that will come with more time and a couple more team adjustments, I'm sure.

UTV!

PS Still puzzled why Sanson is not preferred to Luiz. [Later note: I have since learnt that Luiz played with a badly gashed mouth, so he did well in terms of toughness. But whether it was right not to replace him could be a question to ask.]